Innovation is a field of study that is simply just a new method, idea or device. However, it is also often regarded as the application of better answers that are meeting unarticulated needs, new requirements or any already existing market needs. Inside the information and communication technology sector, the mobile phone industry has become a very innovative segment. Technical advancements and new product proliferation have molded this industry into an extremely dynamic one. This has happened even after the market shares are extremely concentrated in the hands of a few giants in the industry. Innovation is the core of every successful product, organization or new venture. Apple Inc. is no exception to that. From their iPod to their Apple Newton to iPhone, Apple, Inc. from the beginning itself have provided the pomp and performance. The iPhone has transformed the mobile phone business completely, along with the internet economy and society as a whole. Before iPhone, touchscreens appeared on Apple’s own Newton. However, what made iPhone transformative in nature was the shift in the concept of underpinning the whole iPhone project. Its designers made it into a full-fledged hand-held computer making calls and browsing.
Major Technological Developments that Contributed to the Success Of iPhone
Ron Wayne, Steve Wozniak, and Steve Jobs together founded Apple, Inc. in 1976. After Wayne left the company, Wozniak presented and designed Apple’s first computer, the Apple I, to Hewlett Packard (HP). Even though HP was not impressed and did not pursue the venture, Jobs and Wozniak continued to develop and sell their computers. In 1980s and early 1990’s, the new versions of Macintosh and the new computers helped Apple do well in their sales. After Jobs became the CEO of Apple, Inc. in 1997 he introduced the iMac, which did huge sales in 1998. From that point onwards the company started doing well. Under the leadership of Jobs, Apple started the introduction of many new and innovative products one at a time. The market bombing iPod and iPhone were introduced in 2001 and 2007 respectively. 2008 recorded an iTunes store sale more than Wal-Mart. The innovation streak continued in 2010 with the introduction of iPad.
Inside the computer hardware industry, technology plays a huge role in influencing the success of any company. Innovation in technical progresses offers a faster, cheaper and better electronic product each year, as it also is instrumental in creating a market segment because of the new products and markets created. Thus, the technological innovation makes the industry fiercer overall each and every year. However, even after the large increase in the worldwide tablet shipments in 2011 reflected the interest of consumers shifting from PCs to smartphones and tablets, there is the threat of new rival products leading to the decrease in the demand for Apple products. Technological changes occur swiftly and Apple needs to keep up with these changes in technology if they do not wish to be left behind their rivals.
iPhone as a Disruptive Innovation
Smartphones existed even before iPhone was introduced in the market. Still it was the increasing technological innovative adoptions by Apple’s iPhone like larger touchscreen, the app stores, ease of use option and an overall improved experience that helped iPhone become a mainstream option. Apple has always been a company who had no qualms about technological standards and easily tossed aside the old and ushered in the new. This is what makes the company great. Apple has always repurposed and refined the existing technologies so that they can fundamentally resonate with the end users. Multitouch technology existed long before iPhone adopted it and made it into something magical. The fingerprint sensor technology was not new, but was not used by consumers a lot. After Apple rolled out their touchID other manufacturers followed suit after seeing the success it brought. The USB feature of Bondi Blue iMac was bold and ambitious at the time it came out and then turned into a defacto peripheral standard.
The term disruptive innovation was first coined by Clayton Christensen to define the process by which products or services moves up the market, displacing established competitors. Disruptive innovation for iPhone happened years ago in the mobile phone industry. People struggled with the first iPhone as a disruptive innovation as it was comparatively expensive at that time, but notice should be given to what it was. At the time of iPhone’s introduction in 2007 the market rulers in the smartphone segments were BlackBerrys, Palm Treos, Motorola Q’s and Symbian smartphones. At that time, the most important attributes were messaging and email, running applications, phone and speaker quality, durability, information access on the web and good battery life. All the smartphone operating systems during that time had developed from PDAs, regular mobile phones and pagers.
The iPhone was launched in 2007, with a large screen, powerful processor and OS and a huge internal memory. It even boasted of an innovative user experience that used the hardware power with zooming, fluid scrolling and the capacity to repaint the screen swiftly. At the time of its launch it was not a very good smartphone according to the standards of that time. Typing was problematic and email function did not work properly. Phone and speaker quality was comparatively poor, the overall phone was fragile. Full internet access was available from the web browser, but was actually unusable. But iPhone moved past that.
Real Innovation behind the iPhone
Steve Jobs described the phone as internet in our pockets and of good value because of the phone, iPod and internet function availability. Smartphones at that provided access to internet, but with a bad user experience. Apple made use of WiFi for providing the internet in the pocket experience to its users via the iPhone, which ultimately made the Safari and Google maps use an incomparable experience. This characterized a new market disruptive innovation.
The path followed by the disruptive innovation was bringing improvement in the iPhone as a competent computing platform and the bandwidth on the wireless network. Apple added more memory, better screens, appstore, and faster processors. The faster wireless network speed enabled a WiFi like experience to turn into a wireless network, bringing in the actual disruption and the whole sector of smartphone manufacturers of got disrupted. Creating a WiFi experience and then translating it to the mobile network as soon as the capabilities bettered is what is tagged as a network disruption. Containing full access to internet and powerful application over the wireless network is what has redefined the meaning of smartphone. Newton was supposed to do for the PDA market what iPhone ultimately went on to do for the mobile market. It sported a sleek design and even had several interesting features.
It’s basic to observe that the condition Apple made with the iPhone was vastly not exactly the same as what was expected by Christensen’s model of disruptive innovation, regardless of the way that thinking back his theory of value chain evolution was accurate. That is the reason after the iPhone was accounted for, Christensen foreseen the device to miss the mark. As showed by Christensen, all together for an invention to be truly “disruptive”, it must start as something with cut down performance yet after some time finishes adequate performance to get the bigger piece of a market at a much lower price. That is not what Apple did. From the soonest beginning stage the iPhone has gave off an impression of being a first class and high-price plan that people hurried to a significant long time.
The major theory of “Integrative Innovation” is the likelihood that a market’s ability to grasp more performance and hold higher prices will augment as showed by the number and value of jobs to be done that have been consolidated into one device in a way that is clear and easy to use. Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation expect that remembering the ultimate objective to be disruptive, products must focus on one job to be done, start at the low-end, upgrade performance after some time and over the long haul end up being satisfactory to get a far reaching some portion of the market. This new framework is in a general sense the inverse. As opposed to starting as not satisfactory and moving in performance and cost, Integrative Innovation is tied in with solidifying distinctive jobs into one and influencing an unrivaled/high-to cost respond in due order regarding begin with and quickly moving down in cost to get sweeping parts of the market. iPhone fits this theory awesome. In September 2007, just two or three months after launch, Apple decreased the price of the iPhone altogether and inside two or three years even developed a lower-cost model called the 5C. The best part about Integrative Innovation and Disruptive Innovation is that they can agree smoothly together and basically address two negating sorts of preoccupation changing innovations.
As believed among the product lore, high profile gadgets that get lost or killed are more often than not are comparatively more interesting than the ones that succeed. Yet in the history of those killings, nothing can be compared to the situation with Apple Newton MessagePad. The product was not simply killed; it was violently slain in its young age by one of technology’s great men. Sadly, it was a remarkable device, a product whose influence we still sense today. At that time, handheld devices were just a matter of science fiction. With Newton, Apple set out to create an entirely new device, a completely new class of computing. The idea was to make computers lip into the pockets of people and go with them out in the world. In fact, the pocket-based design was a core requirement. The requirement of the device included having a pen, a radio working on a pager frequency, designable built in forms and templates, and having the capacity to act as a seamless input device for a PC. The number one requirement it had to fit in was inside people’s pocket. Focus was given on width to make the holding experience more secure and comfortable.
The result of all these work and effort gave birth to a completely new form of device that ran a completely new and bold design language. The only major problem has handwriting. By 1993, they barely got it functioning when they started shipping it. Handwriting recognition was decided to be Newton’s killer feature, and yet it went on to become the main feature that killed the product. Character recognition problems in Newton became the center of the jokes, most commonly in Doonesbury comic strips. The situation was devastating. The negativity was a huge blow to the team who had dedicated everything into the Newton. They immediately went back to work and got the glitch sorted. However, it was too late. The character recognition feature got corrected and it came out just flawless and phenomenal. However, there came out another stumbling block – the once joy to use device never got a second look. The biggest clampdown for Newton was that Steve Jobs himself hated it because of the poor performance and even mocked the novel input mechanism. At that time, Apple had way too many projects and there was nothing more to do with Newton. Looking back, Newton had lofty goals that were out before the necessary technology to sustain it become commonplace.
To conclude, people wondered what made Apple, Inc. so successful. The main determinants are Jobs’ leadership and visionary approach towards innovation, and quality of product Apple delivered. Apple’s operations have been effective from the beginning itself, and they have been able to garner the required attention and sales volume for moving ahead. Disruptive or not, Apple has been able to capture the market share and people’s mind as being the greatest mobile company ever.